June, 2015:

Front of the house as of June 27th, 2015. All the windows (except for one) are in. Shingles are on. House is wrapped (except the garage door area because of framing work they’ll need to do when the garage doors are installed).

We’re having a geothermal HVAC system installed and they started drilling the wells a couple weeks ago. The original plan was to have four 250-foot holes for the larger geothermal unit and three 250-foot holes for the smaller unit (because of the length of the house, it’s more efficient and cost effective to have two units like that). However, around 80 feet down, the driller hit a big area of sand and the hole kept collapsing back on itself almost immediately, so the hole plan had to change. There will be twelve 80-foot holes for the larger unit and eight 90-foot holes for the smaller unit. Our whole back yard is currently dotted with holes spouting black tubing!

Once it’s all done, everything will be hidden four feet underground, so it’s no big deal. It will actually be a little easier on the geothermal pump because of the shallower wells. We just have to make sure that any future construction plans don’t dig down deeper than four feet!

It’s amazing the progress that’s been made since my last update (which was, admittedly, a long time ago). We’re still living in the center section (the original house, basically), but both additions are nearing the point where they’re going to be drywalled.

The roofs are done and shingled. The windows (except for one that’s on order) are all installed. The interior framing is (I think) all done except for, perhaps, a few minor things. Plumbing, electrical, and HVAC work are done on the garage wing and have been started on the master bedroom wing.

That’s expected to be completed by next Monday or Tuesday so the inspectors can check it out and the insulators can come do their bit. After that, it’s drywall time!

Framing in Megan’s room

HVAC duct work in the garage

Electrical panels in the garage

I don’t have a current, full exterior view at the moment and it’s raining right now, so I can’t go take one, but here’s a shot around the back of the master bedroom wing. They just finished roofing the porch out of the master bedroom so I took a picture of that and of the view that we’ll have from the bedroom out onto the porch.